China Tales and Stories

China Tales and Stories: HOU YI AND CHANG E (Chinese Version)

Hou Yi and Chang E is perhaps the most romantic tale in the entire Chinese literary tradition. The story reminds us that dedicated, heroic lives and beautiful, enduring love are not only compatible, but are always possible - quite often even going hand in hand...

Hou Yi and Chang E is a tale from the Mead-Hill collection, China Tales and Stories. It follows the journey of a young man sent from Heaven to perform an important task on earth. Equally powerful and memorable are the relationship between the young man and his wife, how she helps him in critical ways with the task, and how the two move off into an adventuresome future together. An unlikely intervention destroys that future together, but not without launching something larger still in the universe: a special love and a special day and a special confection and a special way of celebrating love and familial and interpersonal intimacy, year after year.

The story of Hou Yi and Chang E is so loved and so famous that not only is every Chinese person aware of it, but it has even grown to be swept up into the most romantic holiday of the year - the Mid-Autumn Festival. (This holiday celebrates an important point in the China calendar, roughly corresponding in time to the "harvest moon" in the West. For more about these ideas, please see Mead-Hill's, China Thinking - An Introduction.)

Hou Yi and Chang E is available in multiple languages and Mead-Hill language combinations.

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